Dual socket VS crazy overclocking.

anamaniacSep 20, 2009, 6:53 AM

Right now, I'm pondering if I want to spend ~600 on a liquid cooling setup and attempt to push my CPU to (hopefully) 4.5GHz+ (I have hit 4GHz on air, but nowhere near stock voltage, and was hitting 85C with Linpack with HSF fan on medium speeds).

For about ~700, I could also go for a dual socket LGA 1336 setup.Another i7 D0 would cost about $330 (Canadian dollars), the dual socket motherboard I'm looking at is $500. Anothet 6GB of DDR3 would cost about $100. A new PSU woud also cost ~$100.Direct cost: $1000I would sell my current motherboard (brand new, so hopefully for about $200 CAD or more).I'd likely sell my CM V8 too (having to HSF would look messed up, and the i7 stock HSF actually looks decent, and being dual socket, I would OC beyond the limits of the stock HSF anyways) hopefully for about $40. I would also sellt my current PSU for hopefully $60.Selling all the junk would return about $300, leaving final cost arond $700.I would eventually fill out the other 12 DIMMS as I can afford them, which would cost about $400.

Motherboard: click here I could go for a cheaper one, but this supports 18 DIMMs, which I find very sexy, and the thought of 36GB of DDR3 is awesome... who needs a SSD when you have a 30GB RAMDISK?)

It will take until the 2nd of next month before I have enough money for either (next payday. I could afford it now, but I intend on paying rent early and being able to afford food...).

I have so far taken a interest in dual socket LGA 1336 motherboards (only because quad socket 1336 motherboards will likely cost more than my house).I know that I can push my CPU over 50% harder, and the RAM at about 1/2 the bandwidth with my current Bloodrage X58 (due to these dual socket boarda and 18 DIMMS not fucussed on bandwidth).However, having 6x the RAM and two sockets allows for mad futureproofing (likely wouldn't need to upgrade for many years).I used to want the Intel Skulltrail, but it was far too expensive for me. Now I can go for this, for less.

I doubt there would be any serious downside.Sure, RAM would be slower, but triple channel 1066MHz is no differnece than triple channel 2133MHz for gaming purposes. That would be well made for by having even the largest games 100% on a ramdisk.

However...I blew my main breaker today (internal element and two top elemnts, 42" television, 17" laptop, million lights, washer, dryver, and whatever the neighbors were drawing, plus my current baby), so either solution presents the challenge of me not being able to game, do laundry, and cook at the same time. =D

It appears it will be 1 month (instead of two weeks) before I can afford this if I want a little security, however, my brother may be finally getting a job (meaning I'm not paying his rent/food/pocket cash etc.).

Think I could rent this off as a decicated server 8-16 hours a day to help cover costs? =D

So you know, on that board you can't just put 1366 coolers on it, the product description says it only works with the Tyan passive cooler, the CPU chips are too close together for anything else, certainly not normal mounts.

I also don't see any support for Crossfire as it does not use a normal chipset (in the consumer market). Pretty sure Intel had RAID/SCSI etc in mind for those PCI-E slots, and there is only a single x16 slot, the others are x8 and too close for any video card shinnanigans.

Those server products are designed to be setup stock, shoved in a cabinet, and left alone. They're not intended for any overclocking, gaming, hardcore graphics, they're designed to crunch numbers reliably for the next decade No games are really going to make use of 8 cores. At the moment most people still recommend a simple 2 core CPU for most games.

So yeah, go with crazy overclocking but I'd leave it until you've got a big crossfire setup and you find the CPU is slowing the game down. Your current OC on the 920 sounds pretty damn fast as it is.

Hmm... the no-crossfire problem went past me, thanks for bringing it up.Maybe we need a new line LGA 1336 skulltrail revision (that isn't more costly than a house)...

For the hell of, Ill see how far I can OC this on the P09 bios (have the P25 on the first bios, but I'm using P09 for 24/7).I'll use prime95 for heat this time I guess (as Linpack stresses more than any thing you'll see in real usage).

ahh...Nothing like hitting 90 degrees and only reaching 175x21...I think it was 4ghz I got it to before... now 175 seems to be the stopper at even a vcore of 1.5v (with a few other voltages vamped up dramatically, and low memory with 1.65v)...I came across a guy with 4GHz under stock voltage... hmm...Let's see what I can get to on all stock voltages...

EDIT:Hit 160x21 before I crashed (via software overclocking) at 100% stock settings (ofcourse, excluding the blck bus speed).160x21 at 1.25V = fine.175x21 at 1.5V = crash... 15MHz higher isn't even stable with +250mV vcore, and a few other voltages ramped to hell and back...Am I missing somethign here?

So you know, on that board you can't just put 1366 coolers on it, the product description says it only works with the Tyan passive cooler, the CPU chips are too close together for anything else, certainly not normal mounts.

I also don't see any support for Crossfire as it does not use a normal chipset (in the consumer market). Pretty sure Intel had RAID/SCSI etc in mind for those PCI-E slots, and there is only a single x16 slot, the others are x8 and too close for any video card shinnanigans..

Most games support between 2-4 threads. By adding another quad-core and dropping the overclock, you're likely to see a performance decrease in games. That kind of rig is basically suited for graphics editing, not gaming. With Hyperthreading, you have 8 threads, although if you were to put 8 cores against 4 cores with SMPT on a heavily multi-threaded app, the 8 real cores would win. But for the time-being, there is virtually nothing that supports more than 4 threads, so your best gaming experience is a single overclocked i7.

The other thing to consider is the advent of GPGPU technology. Before they start making games that support more processor cores, you'll see games that use multiple GPUs more efficiently and for more than just graphics. Some of the current (and most obvious) ones are PhysX/Havok and Guda. Because of the GPUs ability to crunch more numbers than a CPU, developers are turning to the GPU for the added processing power.

Most games support between 2-4 threads. By adding another quad-core and dropping the overclock, you're likely to see a performance decrease in games. That kind of rig is basically suited for graphics editing, not gaming. With Hyperthreading, you have 8 threads, although if you were to put 8 cores against 4 cores with SMPT on a heavily multi-threaded app, the 8 real cores would win. But for the time-being, there is virtually nothing that supports more than 4 threads, so your best gaming experience is a single overclocked i7.

The other thing to consider is the advent of GPGPU technology. Before they start making games that support more processor cores, you'll see games that use multiple GPUs more efficiently and for more than just graphics. Some of the current (and most obvious) ones are PhysX/Havok and Guda. Because of the GPUs ability to crunch more numbers than a CPU, developers are turning to the GPU for the added processing power.

With that said, your best bet is to your i7 and Crossfire.

+1

the dual LGA1366 would only be good if you had a program to use 8+ threads, or if you needed(/wanted0 a good chunk of memorythough having a 64GB ramdisk would be cool to have games on, think of the load times on that (eat that ssd)

I almost forgot. For the time when games start using more than 4 cores (or they use all 4 cores and you want a couple available for background processes), there will be 6 and 8-core CPUs available and they will hopefully fit in the 1366 socket. If not, it will be cheaper to upgrade to a future motherboard that will fit a 6 or 8-core CPU (with HT too). I read an article a while back that showed that a single 4-core CPU was faster than dual 2-core CPUs, so it could be to your benefit to stick with a single CPU setup.

"the dual LGA1366 would only be good if you had a program to use 8+ threads, or if you needed(/wanted0 a good chunk of memory though having a 64GB ramdisk would be cool to have games on, think of the load times on that (eat that ssd)"

"the dual LGA1366 would only be good if you had a program to use 8+ threads, or if you needed(/wanted0 a good chunk of memory though having a 64GB ramdisk would be cool to have games on, think of the load times on that (eat that ssd)"

Yea no doubt. Sucks that it wouldn't do a thing for frames though ><

yeah t wouldn't help frames, though not having a pagefile helps (i have 8GB memory)

I almost forgot. For the time when games start using more than 4 cores (or they use all 4 cores and you want a couple available for background processes), there will be 6 and 8-core CPUs available and they will hopefully fit in the 1366 socket. If not, it will be cheaper to upgrade to a future motherboard that will fit a 6 or 8-core CPU (with HT too). I read an article a while back that showed that a single 4-core CPU was faster than dual 2-core CPUs, so it could be to your benefit to stick with a single CPU setup.

yeah the dual socket has inherent latency between the two cpus with the QPI or hT link. This is because of the way memory is organized ie each cpu has its own bank of memory dimms, accessing memory from another cpu's dimm bank incurs latency between the processor.

1. There aren't any Dual Socket Motherboards that will support overclocking that's worth the investment.2. If you want to use a XEON CPU, the Intel Xeon W3550 is $600. You can overclock this to over 5.0GHz with water cooling. Thus, against the i7 975 that's $1000, you save $400.3. One of the main reasons to have a Dual Socket Motherboard is for Database servers or anything that doesn't have hyperthreading optimization (i.e. SQL Server). A Quad Core hyperthreading with 8 threads is not as efficient as two Quad Cores without hyperthreading and 8 threads. However, once optimized, an Intel Dual Socket Quad Core system can opt to have 16 threads.4. While the Intel Xeon W3550 can get to 5.0GHz when overclocked, it will need to have hypthreading disabled. Though at around 4.5GHz, with hyperthreading, I'm not sure which generally performs better... that, or 2 Quad Core X5520's at 2.26GHz with hyperthreading.

I have a Dual XEON X5520 2.26GHz setup with Hyperthreading disabled with 24 GB RAM for use as a Virtualization Server with Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V. If I knew any better that Hyper-V only allows up to 4 Cores per VM, then I would have gone with a non Dual Socket server setup. However, if I wanted to use my server using 8 Cores for a database server (Hyperthreading is not optimized for SQL Server), it'd be much more efficient than a single 4 Core setup with or without hyperthreading.

However, it is nice knowing I can get 16 threads, but for a Virtualization Server, I should have gone with a non Dual Core server.

I almost forgot. For the time when games start using more than 4 cores (or they use all 4 cores and you want a couple available for background processes), there will be 6 and 8-core CPUs available and they will hopefully fit in the 1366 socket. If not, it will be cheaper to upgrade to a future motherboard that will fit a 6 or 8-core CPU (with HT too). I read an article a while back that showed that a single 4-core CPU was faster than dual 2-core CPUs, so it could be to your benefit to stick with a single CPU setup.

Foxconn claims it will support the upcoming Intel i9's. Apparantly, hardware wise, it's all there, someone needs to just be willing to do the BIOS update, which is already being worked on.I love Foxconn.

I can imagine the hexa-core (8 core) i9's will be quite pricy when they hit though. Let's hope I still have money then.

1. There aren't any Dual Socket Motherboards that will support overclocking that's worth the investment.2. If you want to use a XEON CPU, the Intel Xeon W3550 is $600. You can overclock this to over 5.0GHz with water cooling. Thus, against the i7 975 that's $1000, you save $400.3. One of the main reasons to have a Dual Socket Motherboard is for Database servers or anything that doesn't have hyperthreading optimization (i.e. SQL Server). A Quad Core hyperthreading with 8 threads is not as efficient as two Quad Cores without hyperthreading and 8 threads. However, once optimized, an Intel Dual Socket Quad Core system can opt to have 16 threads.4. While the Intel Xeon W3550 can get to 5.0GHz when overclocked, it will need to have hypthreading disabled. Though at around 4.5GHz, with hyperthreading, I'm not sure which generally performs better... that, or 2 Quad Core X5520's at 2.26GHz with hyperthreading.

I have a Dual XEON X5520 2.26GHz setup with Hyperthreading disabled with 24 GB RAM for use as a Virtualization Server with Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V. If I knew any better that Hyper-V only allows up to 4 Cores per VM, then I would have gone with a non Dual Socket server setup. However, if I wanted to use my server using 8 Cores for a database server (Hyperthreading is not optimized for SQL Server), it'd be much more efficient than a single 4 Core setup with or without hyperthreading.

However, it is nice knowing I can get 16 threads, but for a Virtualization Server, I should have gone with a non Dual Core server.

Thanks for the info.I've heard that typically XEONs are better overclockers, though I have just as much against.I also know the argument for virtulization vs not.... Would I rather use as many of the transistors on the core as I can, or stick to using a much more limited amount of transistors but with them running faster? In general, I like my 8 'slightly' slower cores.

Or or or, how about the final argument?i9 hexacore professionally watercooled with 3 4870x2's in a sexa-fire and 3 2560x1600 30inch monitors in a tripple diplay...Or a Mercedes Benz?(I bet the latter is cheaper... however, I hate drving, so public transportation and i9 for me.)